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Mack wakes with the sheets corkscrewed around his legs, his hands trapped under the pillow, his whole body feeling milky-sore and humid-choked. The panic spikes when he tugs at the sheets uselessly, his hands feeling like lead, and he hears his own whine heavy in his throat, spiking a dull pain at the back of his head.
Finally, there’s another hand helping him, tugging the sheets with short, sure movements until Mack’s legs are free enough for him to roll over and pant tiredly over the edge of the bed, hearing his own quiet gasps for air. The room spins a little.
He feels his fingers slip on the sheets, before Will pulls him back towards him, tugging him upright with a forearm braced around Mack’s shoulders. The dry callouses of his hands scrape over Mack’s fever-slick skin, and Mack shivers, deliberating between slumping into the grip and squirming out of it. He settles on trying to bat Will’s hands away, waving uselessly towards the window.
“Open it,” he croaks. ‘’m hot.”
Will, behind him, still adjusting to the world as he always does in those first five minutes of being awake, shifts his grip on Mack’s shoulders and turns him toward him, the sheets damp under Mack’s legs. He really just wants the fucking window open. The heat’s peaked so high he can feel it radiating off his own skin like a skillet.
“Get ‘ff,” Mack mumbles, tongue heavy in his head, eyes feeling like he’s stared too long at an illuminated patch of ice. “Smit, c’mon.”
“You’ve got a fever,” Will says, simply.
Will’s forehead is cool against Mack’s own when he tips forward to meet it, Will’s hands wide and dry at Mack’s cheeks. When Mack manages to crack an eye open, bleary, sore, Will’s forehead is still pressed to his and his gaze is fixed somewhere at the bridge of Mack’s nose, eyebrows knitted.
“Yeah,” Mack mumbles, trying to pull back away from Will’s hands and too-close concern, but his body doesn’t want to cooperate, so he just sags further into the grip. “Whatever.”
“What—ugh,” Will mumbles. “Stay here. Don’t die.”
Will drops him unceremoniously back into the pile of pillows before the mattress shifts under them, the lightswitch flicking on as Will passes it on his way out of the room. Mack feels his hair slump, damply, over his forehead, tickling where it catches the corner of his eye when he sinks more into the pillows. He has to push himself up after a moment when his breathing catches, before sighing deeply in distaste. Graf had picked something up from his girlfriend which has apparently been passed onto Mack, the flu-season fever licking at his bones as it developed overnight.
Will’s gone for a few minutes, characterized by the dull sounds of movement in the kitchen and the brief sound of the toilet flushing, but he returns with one of the bottles of stored water from the cupboard and the abandoned box of tissues from where they keep it at the top of the fride—the actually nice aloe tissues for a flu, not the cheap bulk pack of 2-ply they keep in the bedside table for jerkoff sessions.
Will pops the cap off the bottle of water, handing it to Mack carefully as he drops the tissues carelessly into the covers beside him. There’s a dark mark on the sheets where Mack’s been steadily sweating through it tonight, and he grimaces slightly as he takes the bottle from Will.
“Don’t spill it,” he warns, cupping a hand under Mack’s mouth as he drinks greedily, the lukewarm water a blessing on his ragged throat, the fever licking at the roof of his mouth. Will drags it away once the plastic’s crinkling under Mack’s hand and Mack slumps into him further, arms wrapping around Will uselessly.
Will wipes at his mouth with a thumb, coming away slickwet from the water Mack’s apparently spilled down his chin like a fucking kid. He’s bare-chested compared to Mack’s hoodie, and Mack splays his hands over his back as Will audibly rolls his eyes, shifting on his knees as the mattress shifts.
“You’re impossible when you’re sick.”
“Mn.”
“That wasn’t a compliment,” Will chides, dropping the bottle somewhere on the bedside table and reaching back up to card a hand through Mack’s damp hair, down the back of his neck where the fever feels like it’s coiling, melting through the rest of him. “I thought your gross cough would’ve passed already.”
“‘parently not,” Mack mumbles miserably. He’s been off practice for two days, sick and feverish and bored. “Why do I feel worse.”
Will doesn’t answer, playing momentarily with the sweat-damp hair at the nape of Mack’s nape from where he’s perched on the edge of the bed. Like this, Mack can stare at him hazily, Will’s clear eyes, assessing look, the fucked-up bedhead curls he hides from everyone except for Mack. Will’s hands are blessedly cool where they skid from his neck over his shoulders, and Mack shudders a little at it, shuffling his face out of Will’s grip and tucking it into the junction of his throat where it’s cooler.
Will always runs weirdly cool, some remnant of Boston that Mack chases greedily in the summer and hides from most of the time in winter, dodging his cold feet under hotel sheets.
Will skids his hands over Mack’s sides and dips them further, playing at the elasticated hem of Mack’s sleep-shorts, fingers tracing along the edge of his abdomen. Mack sighs heavily into the side of Will’s neck, and then frowns when Will’s fingers dip under the waistband, seeking more.
“Are you serious,” Mack slurs, still feeling groggy, but he presses further into the touch, chasing the sensation of Will’s cool hands. “Smitty, du—” Mack cuts himself off with a ragged breath, “dude.”
“Jesus,” Will mutters, his hand fully slipped into Mack’s shorts now; palming over his lower stomach, the crease of his thigh. “You’re so hot.”
“Thanks,” Mack mumbles.
“Wasn’t a compliment.”
Mack turns his face into Will’s neck with a tired groan. “Coward.”
Will snorts, his nails catching slightly in the hair at the base of Mack’s stomach, absentmindedly tracing the clammy skin. Mack arches up a little into it absentmindedly, unsure if the dampness he feels is from being turned on or the slick fever-sweat he’s covered in. “You feel okay?”
“I feel like shit, Smit, obviously. Are you going to fuck me or nah?”
Mack feels loopy and dizzy and pliant in Will’s grip when Will makes a pleased sound, pressing Mack back down into the covers, a hand at the back of his neck rolling him over as Will climbs back onto the bed proper. His hand presses down on Mack’s shoulders, keeping him propped up on his knees with his ass up as his face is smooshed into the pillows. The fever’s got everything feeling blurred around the edges, his brain drifting slow and heavy, his skin too hot for his own body. Will’s hands are the only thing cutting through it.
Mack sinks into the sensation of it, the easy distraction of Will’s hand wrapping around his cock, wide and calloused and firm. Will’s careful with it, slow in a way he is when they’re injured, and Mack barely jolts at the touch with the lethargy that the fever’s hit him with. All he does is shift a little to lie more comfortably, rocking into Will’s hand, the slide of it easy with the gross sheen of sweat over every inch of Mack’s skin. Will’s flattened himself over Mack’s back, pressing him deeper into the bed, his other hand kneading at Mack’s shoulder through the hoodie he’s still wearing.
Mack tries to suck in a hot breath where his face is pressed into the pillows, lying on his stomach, and his lungs cramp uselessly even as Will thumbs over the head of his cock.
“I can’t—I can’t breathe properly like this,” Mack complains, huffing into the sheets pitifully. With his stuffed up sinuses, the sickness flattens itself over the plane of his lungs when he’s horizontal.
“Okay then,” Will mumbles, drawing his hands out of Mack’s shorts to sit upright behind him. “One sec.”
Mack’s left to wallow in the sheets for only a moment before Will tugs him up against his chest, bullying his knees between Mack’s legs until he’s straddling him, Will’s arm around his shoulders keeping him upright. The room spins, a little, the haze of the sickness dizzying him while Will roams a hand greedily over his thigh.
“You’re ter—terrible,” Mack chokes out past a cough. “Perv.”
“You asked,” Will mumbles into the back of Mack’s neck, his lips on the fever-damp skin, all of it just wet. “You don’t want it?”
Mack, admittedly mulishly, sighs, swallowing down a dry cough. “No.”
“Relax, then,” Will mumbles, skating his hand up Mack’s thigh until he has leverage enough to tug Mack’s sleep shorts off roughly, abandoning them to the carpet as his hand roves up and down the length of his torso again. “Breathe, Mack.”
“‘m still hot,” Mack complains. “The—”
“The window is open, you absolute princess,” Will mumbles into his ear, his chin digging into the back of Mack’s trap as he peers over his shoulder. “I know you’re hot, you’re fucking dripping.”
Will’s hand slips down Mack’s side when he tries to hold around his ribs, slick with fever-sweat. Mack’s breath feels humid, the same way it does in San Jose in spring, all damp and groggy and exhaustion in his lungs. Behind him, Will’s breath nearly steams on contact with his skin.
Will’s hand slides from his hip to the thick curve of adolescent muscle inside Mack’s thighs, and digs his fingers in a little to the reddened skin.
Mack stares hazily at the movement as Will’s hand reaches under him, fingers already slick with sweat and not much else as they trace Mack’s rim. The scrape of it isn’t as intense as it can be, the exhaustion dimming the reaction to Will’s fingers, but Mack feels tender at every nerve ending, the fever cooking him alive.
“If you don’t use lube I’ll kill you,” Mack threatens blearily, still making sense of his own words.
“You would,” Will agrees easily, and when Mack turns to see where Will’s moving, Will’s eyes are blown wide and blue and still fixed on Mack where he’s fumbling for the tube crammed between the wall and the headboard. “I’d tell you to relax,” Will starts, shifting again to drag Mack higher onto his lap, “but you’re barely upright now, huh?”
It only sounds a little condescending, coming from Will, but Mack’s spared the need to defend his pride when Will brings his fingers back to Mack’s hole, slicker than before. To his credit, he’s more careful than usual, or at least slower. Mack hears his own flu-pitched whine when Will presses in with the first finger, crooking it just barely as he eases it inside, the hot pressure of it.
“Fuck, you’re cooking,” Will says, awed, and then he just doesn’t fucking stop talking, mumbling with a wet mouth into the back of Mack’s hoodie as he eases a second finger in alongside it. “Gonna be so warm for me, huh Celly? Keeping it comfortable for me? Fuck, Mack.”
It’s usually at this point that Mack would bite something back about the pervy language, but the touch is so overwhelming that he just gasps helplessly when Will scissors his fingers wide enough that Mack feels the stretch of his rim and tastes the spit pooling in his mouth. The slow pressure of it rocks at his insides, and he presses back a little into it as Will fingers him, opening him up with one hand while the other hand splays over Mack’s front, the veins in his forearm bulging where he’s bracing Mack upright in his lap.
It’s nice for a few minutes before Mack’s hit with a wave of momentary lightheadeness, a flare of panic when he gasps around a hot breath and can’t drag enough back in, the hoodie he’s still in a thick weight over him and way too fucking humid—
“I want it off,” Mack chokes, panicked, scrabbling at the thick hem of his hoodie. “I’m too hot, Will—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Will chants,, “hang on.”
His hands are cool against the flat of Mack’s stomach when he slides his gross lube-covered hands up under the hoodie, catching it under the armpit seams and urging Mack’s arms up while he’s still sitting in Will’s lap.
Will slides a hand up Mack’s side while he catches his breath, the new layer of sweat cooling on his skin as Will pats consolingly at Mack’s flank. Mack can hear the high pitch of Will’s breathing behind him, the way he inhales in a weird pattern when he’s horny as fuck. He can feel the press of Will’s dick against Mack’s ass. He can feel his own fever of one hundred fucking three.
The room’s dark. It’s probably three in the morning or somewhere about that, and Will has practice in four hours but instead he’s fingering Mack open while the illness melts him from the inside out. Mack tries, momentarily, focusing his vision to stave off the lingering dizziness, but he feels his brain slipping away before he can latch onto it. He thinks briefly about when he’ll be deemed no longer a biohazard enough to go back to the rink, and then has the inane thought of someone burying him in the Sharkie suit if he dies of this. He wonders if the fantasy of the fever-dreams is spilling over into waking, which would explain why Will is being so nice to him.
“You good?” Will asks, already drifting back to press at Mack’s hole. Mack’s not sure what he mumbles, but the wave of desperation for Will’s touch overwhelms everything else. He rocks back a little onto Will’s fingers, trying to catch the right angle where he’s propped up on Will’s thighs, and sighs at the stretch.
He knows the sickness has taken enough out of him when Wil brushes his prostate and all Mack feels is his muscles contract lazily and his body slumping into the pleasure, the bolt of sensation pressing deep into his hip-bones and not much else. He hears himself whine a little when Will draws his fingers back out, wiping them on the already sweat-soaked sheets, and his normal fucking concience which has been relegated to the back of his head cringes at the embarrassingly needy noise.
The cap of the lube clicks again, and Mack drops his head back far enough to rest it on Will’s shoulder behind him, tipping his head to see Will’s face as he smears his fingers with it.
“Hey,” Will says, peering down at Mack’s face, his curls damp from the dense, humid atmosphere Mack’s created by dint of his shitty immune system. His eyes are just a shade too dark in the light from the doorway, and his teeth are wonky. He needs to shave. “You look so sick.”
Will presses a kiss to Mack’s mouth, opening his mouth into it when Mack’s jaw goes slack. He drags his tongue over the ridge of Mack’s top retainer, before pulling back and nudging Mack forward a little, dislodging him from his shoulder.
“Here,” Will mumbles, re-adjusting them both so he can slick himself up more than Mack’s gross fever-sweat has offered, lining himself up before he pushes in slowly. The stretch burns momentarily, before Mack forces himself to breathe out and the head of Will’s cock pops past the rim with ease. Will stops momentarily to shift them so that Mack’s sitting propped on his thighs again, knees on either side of his lap, and then pulls Mack down until he bottoms out with a moan from both of them. The inside of Mack’s thighs skid down Will’s when his knees give out at the stretch.
“God, you’re fucking roasting,” Will moans, rocking upwards again like he can’t believe it. Mack’s still trying to compute which way is up, unable to focus on anything other than the deep pressure of Will inside him, warm and yet still cooler than any inch of Mack’s own body. “Just so hot and tight—”
“You already said th—at,” Mack interrupts, sighing through his blocked sinuses, but he gasps when Will fucks up into him to brush up against his prostate and barely keeps his eyes from rolling back at the sensation. “Come up with someth’ new, college boy.”
“You really are just impossible when you’re sick,” Will repeats, but he doesn't really sound mad about it, just uses that voice that he sometimes pulls out when Mack falls asleep on him or suggests getting takeout at midnight or wants another kiss. He drags his hand up from Mack’s chest where it’s keeping him upright to slip his fingers past Mack’s lips and press down on his tongue. “Just shush for a moment.”
Mack’s fever-addled brain just goes yay, and he clamps down on Will’s fingers, tracing the gaps between them as he sucks on them, teeth holding them in place enough that they don’t budge even as Will picks the pace up, bouncing Mack in his lap. If he were less delirious from the illness he’d find it hot as fuck the ease in which Will handles Mack’s 200 pounds of hockey boy, but as it is he just gags pleasantly when Will drives deeper, slow thrusts that rock them both. The bed creaks under them a little, the shitty IKEA frame in the sleepout, and Mack’s caught between the press on his tongue and the press inside of him and the press on his lungs from the sickness. Will’s mumbling something to him that Mack barely registers, his vision fuzzing as he tries to open his eyes to focus on something and instead leaving him half-lidded and blurry.
Mack coughs lightly when Will drives a little deeper, the ragged dry end of it trailing off into a ragged moan, and Will tugs lightly at his fingers where they’re trapped in Mack’s mouth, giving him enough room to breathe. A pornographic string of spit follows Will’s fingers when they draw back out of Mack’s mouth, ragged nails hooking momentarily around the back of Mack’s bottom teeth and dragging him forward with the movement.
“Mn,” Mack mumbles, tipping forward further, balance lost the moment he deliriously tracks a floatie in his vision anywhere other than the tips of Will’s slick fingers that he’s been focusing on. Will catches him with that now-free hand, his arm flexing hard around Mack’s ribs when he nearly folds inward, but it has them both tipping forward a little more. Will sinks deeper with a wet sound, and Mack feels his eyes roll back.
“Fuck,” Will moans, audibly gleeful at the sensation, and Mack lets his body slump into open air, held up by the belt of Will’s arm across his middle. “You’re just so fucking warm.”
Mack would push back with another smart fucking comment but he’s still making sense of what direction he’s facing, part of his brain being pulled apart by the delirium of the sickness and Will’s apparent intention to fuck the rest of his brains out.
Will pulls them back so Mack’s settled back against his chest, hooking a heel over Mack’s knee so he can pry his legs further apart, shifting the angle enough that Mack sniffles a little at the sensation. The muscles in his legs have gone weak, all sickness-lethargy and the cliff-edge sensation of his building orgasm, and Mack watches his own thighs tremble, glinting with sweat and precome in the light that’s spilling in from the hallway.
Will mouths over the back of Mack’s shoulders, teeth slipping on the skin while he does all the work for the both of them, lifting Mack enough by the thighs to rock into him at a steady pace, that low pressure building. Mack tries to keep focus on anything; the touch, the sound of Will’s ragged breaths, the walls all hazy and milky white where they painted over a hole in the plaster of the sleepout. The fever strips him down to base physicality, dragging every thought away the moment it enters his mind, leaves him hazy and over-stimulated and so fucking hot he can only press further towards Will. There’s only the barest hint of difference in temperature between their skin now, Will’s hands warm under Mack’s thighs and ass, keeping him upright.
“Smi—t,” Mack coughs out, his tongue lolling out and his vision bleeding at the edges. He can hear the whine in his voice. “Don’t be mean—”
Will’s fucking swimming in it, the slick sounds of precome and lube and fever-sweat between them filling the room until it’s all Mack can hear beyond his own stuffed up ragged breathing. The more he tries to push himself up to ride Will, the less his muscles cooperate, the ragged uselessness of blowing out your arms in a shootout practice.
“C’mon Celly,” Will mumbles, reaching down to wrap his hand around Mack’s neglected, fever-red dick and pumping it in his sweat-slick palm. “Keeping me so warm in here, you need a reward or something?”
Mack’s only reply is some garbled delirium of a sentence, clenching uselessly and shaking, his legs trying and failing to clamp shut where they’re held apart by Will’s thighs where he’s straddling him still. The only hint that his orgasm is coming is the violent pitch-up of his body temperature that makes Mack feel like his brain’s burning up, and the noise from Will as Mack clenches around his dick, spilling over both their laps as he shivers and shakes.
Will’s not far behind him, fucking Mack through the aftershock of his orgasm while Mack’s hands scrabble over the back of Will’s forearm for purchase. He gasps against the back of Mack’s neck as he comes, teeth raking a little over the slick skin, and then drops back down onto his knees on the bed where he’d been pushing up into Mack.
“Fuck,” he swears, pushing up a little more into before letting go of Mack’s dick to smooth his hand over Mack’s shaking thighs, the fever and the orgasm combining to make him shake continuously. Under his knees, the bed feels damp, and Mack’s brain feels like it’s shorted out.
“Do I have to pull out?” Will complains slightly, half-joking as Mack shudders at how full he feels, still feverish and still seeking out Will’s cool hands. “It’s so warm here.”
“Ass’ole,” Mack slurs, and apparently the fact that Mack can’t stop shivering is enough for Will to drop the joke and pull out carefully, Mack still balanced precariously on his lap. With that same strength as before, he hauls Mack off his lap and settles him onto Will’s ‘side’ of the bed, void of sweatstains in the shape of a body. Mack feels himself sag into the mattress, all his nerves singing and his mouth too full with hot breath and his retainer. Another inane fever-dream thought of this being something he can do forever rises in his mind, and doesn’t want to go away.
“Christ,” Will laughs softly at whatever he sees on Mack’s face, smoothing a cool hand over Mack’s forehead and pushing the damp bangs out of his vision. In the blur of Mack’s vision, Will’s red-faced and sweaty, a string of spit connecting his canines. “This cannot possibly have helped the fever. Go to sleep before you actually cook your brain.”
Mack doesn’t argue. He’s out like a fucking light the second Will pulls his hand away.
—
When Mack wakes up again, the humidifier is set up on the bedside table and the room smells like Vicks. When he raises a hand to the plane of his own chest it comes away sticky with ointment. The curtains are drawn. Will is plastered over as much of Mack as it seems he deemed appropriate for a fever. Mack has no idea what day it is.
Fuck it, he thinks, and tucks closer inwards to the shared heat.